Soul vs spirit

 I’m fascinated by the things we take for granted, those things we build our worldview upon but don’t examine.  A short while ago while reading a passage by David Hall and Roger Ames I made a connection that tied together many ideas and reflections I have had over the past several years.  I love those moments of insight and I hope the fruits of this one may benefit someone else as well.

I believe we are in a culture and cultivating minds largely preoccupied with soul.  My specific usage of the word will need explaining.  I definitely don’t mean it in the funk or R&B sense (we need more of that soul not less).  In a universe of mutually entailing yin/yang dualisms, I’d like to introduce another:  Soul vs spirit.  I don’t believe I’m creating a new interpretation of these words and in fact think our spoken language holds this distinction clear already.  

When we describe “getting to the soul of the matter,” or ‘they put their soul into it’, or certainly the metaphysical concept of the immortal soul, we demonstrate a belief that there is a deeper, hidden essence to things which captures something more true about it than the specific behaviours or expressions on the surface.  This essentialism is well documented and clear from at least as far back as Plato.  We see it in our understanding of people when we ignore poor behaviour from someone we “ know deep down to be a good person” (or vice versa).  Both the search for a “true self” and the mechanisms of our analytical worldview are rooted in this ‘soul-thinking’.  We believe we can find natural rules or laws that govern all the universe.  We think we can understand complex systems by taking them apart to their fundamental building blocks.  This is the basis of most of Western science and a large part of its philosophy and psychology as well.  

Importantly, I don’t want to reject this way of thinking. It is as necessary as its counterpart: left and right, beauty and ugliness, each defines and depends on the other. The danger lies not in soul-thinking itself but in our overemphasis on it.

The other pole is spirit.  The spirit of a thing is something less certain than its soul.  It’s much more diffuse, intangible, flexible, and comprehensive.  When we search for the spirit of something we’re looking for any and all presence of it. My spirit can be found in everything I have ever done and every relation I have in the world.  By its expansive and comprehensive nature, spirit can never be fully comprehended, for it is always in motion, creating new relations and expressions.  It encompasses not just what isn't known but what cannot be known.  

There’s something holographic about this view of spirit. The spirit of any being is reflected in the whole universe, and the universe’s spirit is on display within each being.

A focus on soul is a focus on certainty, specificity and timelessness.  Seeking spirit means to not let the mind stop moving, stuck on details, but instead to take it all in.  Instead of struggling to peel back the layers of a thing to get to its underlying principles, we cultivate presence to stay aware of the shifting web of relations and behaviours that become the unfolding experience of that thing. 

 Trusting our intuition, we can rely on powerful means of pattern recognition and embodied understanding that can come from this awareness, but also we’re being less predictive and more present to the infinite changes that are possible.  We are not simplifying or reducing but we are also not staring at a map when we could be out exploring the land.  

I know that maps are useful and analysis is powerful.  I know prediction is important and being in the constant flow of the moment is probably not cogntively efficient.  Still, how much are we plagued by the symptoms of an inability to tolerate uncertainty?  How much do we suffer from the effects of our reductions?  How much less rich does our experience become after our reductions become trivialisations?  Everything is ‘just this’ or ‘only that.’  

What if, instead, we swam in the ever-evolving expression of the universe revealed even in the smallest details of our lives?

Balance is certainly needed somewhere in the middle.  I think we have a tendency towards soul thinking that Taoists (and many others) have recognized and tried to correct.  A bit of the other extreme may be exactly what’s necessary to find our way to the centre.

I'll offer some more potential benefits when I write on affect and suffering from the yin and yang, next time.